


Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

by allofthefandoms



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Self Harm, Songfic, Suicidal Thoughts, lots of pain and suffering, pain and suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-24 08:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allofthefandoms/pseuds/allofthefandoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oh my friends, my friends forgive me<br/>That I live and you are gone.<br/>There's a grief that can't be spoken.<br/>There's a pain goes on and on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

**Author's Note:**

> So I have a lot of Les Mis feels and this happened.

There's a grief that can't be spoken.  
There's a pain goes on and on.  
Empty chairs at empty tables  
Now my friends are dead and gone.

 

Phil outlived all of them. It was the bitterest of ironies, that a 50 year old man would bury such vital people and be left behind. Steve, Natasha, Clint, Tony, Bruce, all gone in the blink of an eye, leaving an old man to continue living for them. So it’s fitting that it’s raining on the day of the funeral. There was a big ceremony at Arlington when they unveiled a memorial, but this was when they were put in the ground. When things became real.  
Phil stands apart from the others, apart from the few friends and family left. He has no cover, no umbrella, and the rain soaks his suit, a carbon copy of the ones they always saw him in at work. He didn’t know what else to do beside hold onto the last shards of his normal life.  
When Nick shot him a look somewhere between grief, pity, and concern, Phil just shook his head. He didn’t want his friend’s pity. Not when there is a man in the ground with a finger that Phil put a ring on. Not when he had lost his job and his purpose, not when the closest thing he had had to family was in the ground. 

 

Here they talked of revolution.  
Here it was they lit the flame.  
Here they sang about `tomorrow'  
And tomorrow never came.

 

Phil still doesn’t know if they had done anything, in the grand scheme of things. They had stood for goodness, light and justice, but was there really more light because these 6 people had lived? The question haunted him, and Phil couldn’t shake the nagging doubt that it had all been for nothing. 

 

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me  
That I live and you are gone.  
There's a grief that can't be spoken.  
There's a pain goes on and on.

 

They kept calling it survivor’s guilt. But it was hardly guilt. More like lasting numbness that Phil just couldn’t shake. They kept prescribing him things, telling him he should get out, spend time with people. But Phil’s people were dead, at least the people who mattered, and no therapist seems to understand that.  
And so he sits in his apartment watching crap television, avoiding the news where some trite program is honoring New York’s fallen heroes. They should be watching Phil, not talking to the president or random passersby. What did they know? They really didn’t lose anything more than a face.

 

Phantom faces at the window.  
Phantom shadows on the floor.  
Empty chairs at empty tables  
Where my friends will meet no more.

 

When the nightmares keep him up, he takes to wandering the faintly lit streets of New York City, and he sees them everywhere. Natasha is in the shadows behind the street lights, and Clint is a flicker of movement on the rooftops. Tony is just out of sight behind the bar, laughing at something Bruce said, Steve at his elbow as Thor serenades the other patrons, drinking a biker under the table with a grin.  
But it was a dream, a pained fantasy that Phil clung to, because it was the last scrap of joy he had left, that somewhere, in some heaven somewhere, they were together.  
But Phil was not with them, and at his lowest, Phil sat on his toilet with a knife in his hand, closing his eyes and wishing he ended up wherever they were. He can’t remember how long he sat like that, wanting to die, but he lived. And he isn’t quite sure if it was worth it. But he can’t leave yet.  
Not yet.

 

Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me  
What your sacrifice was for  
Empty chairs at empty tables  
Where my friends will meet no more


End file.
